Few people pay such close attention to the weather – or changes in climate patterns -- as farmers.

And in many cases, Central New York farmers are noticing recent changes. The consensus: For whatever reason, the growing season in this area seems to be getting a little longer.

“This is unscientific – but I’ve noticed, and heard from other farmers I’ve talked to, that we have gained warmth in the fall,” said Brian Reeves, whose family has grown fruit and vegetables at Reeves Farms near Baldwinsville for more than a century.

“It used to be you’d get a frost scare, the first frost, maybe Sept. 15 or 20,” Reeves said. “By Oct. 1, you’d get that hard freeze. Now we get the scare about Oct. 1, but maybe not get the first hard frost until close to Halloween, or maybe Oct. 20 or so.”

Yet Reeves said he hasn’t seen the same change in the spring. “We still plant the vegetables about the same time in the spring, unless it rains,” he said.

Farmers tend to measure the season by what is normal or average -- for example by taking the average date of the first or last frost in the past 100 years.

“Based on the 100-year average, we’ve seen green buds (on apple trees) a little earlier than that average in a lot of the recent years,” said Peter Fleckenstein, orchard manager at Beak & Skiff Apple Farms in LaFayette. “But then you get odd years where
it’s completely different.”

“It seems a little more extreme now,” said Matthew Critz, who grows apples, berries, maple and Christmas trees and more at Critz Farms near Cazenovia. “It’s one thing this year and something else the next. I can remember times when it seems like it was more ‘normal.’

“Normal -- we’re always talking about normal,” he said “We talk about the normal, or the average temperature, and what is should be. But I don’t think there ever is normal, not anymore.”

Critz said, for example, that he has heard from maple producers that the day for sap to start running in late winter has seemed “to creep up by about 10 days,” in recent years.

That would be from early March into late February, though it varies greatly depending on such factors as elevation (Critz Farms is relatively high at 1,400 feet).

“There are actually a lot of variable that go into it,” he said.

Jim Bedient, who grows wine grapes in Branchport on Keuka Lake, doesn’t know about
long-term changes, but he certainly has seen the effects in recent years.

“In the last four years we’ve had two of the warmest growing seasons – the warmest degree days – that we’ve ever had,” said Bedient, a former president of the New York Wine Grape Growers Association. “But over the long haul, I’m not sure.”

Everyone seems to agree that the last few years have been unusual. That’s especially true for 2012, with its low snowfall and wave of temperatures in the 70s starting in March.

“That was the most extreme March and April I’ve ever seen,” Reeves said. “Last year the weather was just stupid.”